Nov. 7, 2013

Written by

The Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

The hard work is about to start. For Detroit’s mayor-elect, Mike Duggan, the year-plus of campaigning to win the mayor’s seat was just a warm-up. When Duggan takes office in January, he’ll have a full slate of urgent needs and priorities to attend to — Detroit’s bankruptcy and operational restructuring are ongoing, but residents need improved delivery of services and quality of life. Balancing the responsibilities of the job with the presence of Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr, who is Detroit’s ultimate authority through, at least, September of next year, further complicates the situation. So where’s a newly elected mayor to start?

We’ve got a few ideas.

1. Check your ego

Orr is in charge. Most elected officials, we genuinely believe, get into the business because they’re committed to public service. But a healthy dose of ego doesn’t hurt.

Orr is running the show. This would pose a challenge for any politician, let alone one ambitious enough to be elected mayor of Detroit. But Duggan needs to be a part of the financial and operational restructuring process. And that means taking a backseat to Orr. Duggan can play an important part in this process — Detroiters need to understand what’s happening in the bankruptcy, and Orr needs a steady hand on city operations. But posturing or jockeying for supremacy won’t serve Detroiters in the long run. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

2. Work with the Detroit City Council. No, really.

For at least a decade, every new mayor — and every new Detroit City Council — pledge to work together. It’s going to be a new era of unprecedented cooperation, because this time, they get how importantit is.

And then it all goes to hell. For Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, the schism came in March 2010, when Lansing lawmakers introduced a Bing-backed bill that would have allowed the mayor to merge the city’s two pension funds with the state-managed Municipal Employment Retirement System — before presenting the plan to the council. It was a tactical error, and the relationship between Bing and the council never recovered. The Detroit City Charter creates the executive and legislative branches as co-equal; it doesn’t behoove any mayor to do an end-run around the council. So listen up, Mr. Mayor-elect: Make it work.

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3. Keep talking to Detroiters

For the last four years, Detroiters have been voting for change. At the polls in 2009, Detroiters elected five new Detroit City Council members, a Detroit City Charter revision commission, a mayor who campaigned as an outsider and a change agent, and voted in a district system for the council. And now, the city’s first white mayor in decades, a man whose move to Detroit took place solely to enable his mayoral campaign. There’s only one way to read these results: Detroiters want change. They want their city fixed, and they’d like it fixed now.

So listen to ’em. During the campaign, Duggan held 250 house parties at the homes of Detroiters, a unique window into residents’ needs and concerns. Accessibility to residents is another perennial campaign promise that often gets left by the wayside once November has passed. But the mayor will be the conduit between Detroiters and the restructuring operation, and between Detroiters and Orr. So keep showing up.

4. Support Police Chief James Craig and his crime-fighting initiatives

Bing bristled when Orr appointed Craig as Detroit’s top cop without consulting the mayor. But Craig has been energetic in attacking the crime epidemic most Detroit voters identify as the city’s No. 1 issue.

Since taking office in July, Craig has overhauled the police department’s top command, eliminated 12-hour shifts, and focused departmental resources on the apprehension of violent offenders. All these initiatives deserve the new mayor’s support.

Detroit’s efforts to combat crime have been hobbled for many years by too-frequent changes in police leadership. The last thing the city needs now is another false start.

5. Focus on attracting talented appointees

“Lack of capacity” is the euphemism critics of the last two mayoral administrations have used to describe a chronic dearth of executive talent at the top. But the debt restructuring that Orr is overseeing promises to free the city from the perpetual financial crisis that has scared many prospective appointees away.

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Duggan will have unprecedented entree with executives who have distinguished themselves in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. He must exploit that asset by quickly assembling a leadership team equal to the opportunities presented by a streamlined city government liberated from its onerous debt.

6. Build on the work of Detroit Future City

It has been 10 months since a diverse and innovative team of planners issued its visionary 349-page plan for redeveloping the city’s neighborhoods and reviving its devastated economy. But during the campaign, both candidates hesitated to endorse its recommendations that new development should be concentrated in the most densely populated neighborhoods and that the least populated tracts should be converted to “green” uses, such as agriculture.

Now that the campaign is over, it’s time for Duggan to acknowledge the reality that vast swaths of vacant land in Detroit are unlikely candidates for near-term redevelopment and embrace the innovative solutions championed by the Detroit Future City report.

The report’s authors have done their homework, but the data underlying their work grows more outdated each day. Instead of reinventing the wheel, Duggan should focus on implementing and enhancing the vision of the Detroit Future City team.